Just a quickie:
POD 1791. Dutty Boukman's Vodou ceremony at the Bois Caïman succeeds in summoning
Baron Samedi, who raises an army of loa to scourge the French settlers. The French, in extremity, respond by turning to Vodou themselves. They invoke
Dinclinsin - a cruel loa who takes the form of a white slave-owner - and, under his guidance, they slaughter their remaining slaves and raise an army of zombies to fight for them.
It is now nineteen years later. The colonists are hanging on in Port-au-Prince, along the northern coastal plain near Cap-Haïtien (which they still call Cap-Français) and in the lower Artibonite Valley. They rule rich sugar plantations worked by undead slaves, although their numbers dwindle every year because of the heavy price Dinclinsin demands for his continued protection. The loa holds court in Gonaïves, surrounded by a bodyguard of white zombies and a harem of planters' daughters on whom he fathers unnatural children.
In the north, Baron Samedi has turned on the men who summoned him, and now rules in his own right. He has imposed a harsh regime on peasants and minor gods alike: there are no zombies in his realm, but he demands frequent sacrifices and enormous quantities of tobacco and rum.
Toussaint rules the Republic of Haiti, a fortress state in the upper Artibonite that defies both Frenchmen and loa, but which is hard pressed by the magical powers of its enemies. In Jacmel, André Rigaud likewise claims to rule a free republic, but he accepts secret aid from France and has accepted white refugees from Gonaïves into his court. And Dessalines, through sheer ruthlessness and force of personality, has made the loa serve him rather than vice versa: his is the largest and strongest of the freedmen's states, but he holds his people and even gods in a reign of terror.
In Europe, where a great continental war has dragged on for a decade to no certain conclusion, the great powers are starting to take an interest...
